Labor MPs have been told to step up their profiles in their electorates to capitalise on ''a tide of anger'' over the first Abbott-Hockey budget, during a special phone-based meeting of the federal caucus.

They were told to set up mobile offices in as many places as possible to field voter concerns and communicate the Labor alternative, with regional centres such as Geelong and Tweed Heads specifically mentioned.

"This government's values tell them it is OK to [send] cheques for $50,000 to millionaires who have a baby while cutting the pension": Chris Bowen, shadow treasurer. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

The regional push reflects a view in Labor that the Nationals in particular have left themselves exposed by allowing a hard-cutting budget formula to prevail with dire consequences for low- and average-income earners outside the nation's capital cities.

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The giant hook-up on Wednesday was run by Labor leader Bill Shorten and also heard from the party's national secretary, George Wright, who revealed the findings of focus group testing of key budget initiatives.

Mr Wright told the MPs that the biggest concerns among voters were the upfront GP payment, and the plan to carve up to $80 billion form projected health and education spending over the decade.

Also high on the list of voter grievances was the delayed pension age and the tightening of Family Tax Benefits.

''The GP tax is dynamite,'' Mr Wright said, according to a source. Disapproval was ''extremely strong'' across the full range of cuts.

Mr Shorten said the Coalition had underestimated Labor's ability to campaign and organise. ''We will fight them now and we will keep fighting them,'' he said.

''There are more nasties coming out every day … we need to maximise our effort now.''

Labor's shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, told the National Press Club on Wednesday his own electorate of McMahon in Sydney's west would be the worst hit by the budget. ''Of the top 10 electorates impacted, nine are represented by the Labor Party,'' he said. Measures such as tighter access to family benefits, regular increases in the petrol excise and co-payments for visits to the doctor would all hit low-income earners the hardest. Calculations by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling showed families in the bottom one-fifth of incomes would see their take-home incomes fall by about 5 per cent while those in the top fifth would see it slip just 0.3 per cent.

''Budgets are about priorities,'' Mr Bowen said. ''This government's values tell them it is OK to introduce a scheme which sends cheques for $50,000 to millionaires who have a baby while cutting the pension, freezing younger people out of Newstart and reducing family payments.''

Labor would oppose the indexation of petrol excise because it would hit poor families harder than well-off ones.

''It is a regressive measure. Many of us in this room would have fuel cards. We have employers who pay petrol. Even if we don't, it's a smaller proportion of our income than it is for families in my electorate trying to get to and from work, trying to drop the kids at Saturday morning footy training, et cetera.''

''This proposal and it's not one we will support. I note the Greens have indicated support or conditional support but our position is to oppose it.''

He rejected government claims that the measures Labor planned to block amounted to $40 billion. Taking into account Labor's support for the continuation of the minerals resource rent tax and carbon tax and its opposition to the Coalition's paid parental leave scheme produced ''a different equation''.

Labor would consider amending the immigration program to include an entrepreneur's visa and changing the tax laws to remove barriers to crowd sourced funding of technology startups.

112 comments

Labor has learnt the first part of the lesson. They are working as a team. And Bowen's address to the Press Club reassured us that they have not given up any of their policies that were aimed at innovation, fairness and the best and fairest social and economic outcomes for every single Australian -- yes, even those who don't vote for them!

Commenter

EM

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 5:50AM

"... they have not given up any of their policies...".And this is why, no matter how unpopular Abbott may be, Labor will not be voted back in 2016. It's Labor policies that have Australia in the mess that it's in. It's Labor policies that have resulted in the need for tough budgets.

Commenter

The Other Guy

Location

Geelong

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 6:27AM

OK, TOG, I get it that you want to take us back to the 'dark ages' before reason and common sense prevailed and people were ruled by the religious fanatics. Luckily, not very many people have your aspirations!

Commenter

EM

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 6:34AM

As Mike Carlton said on the weekend, Abbott's lies are on a scale never before seen in politics..http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbotts-name-is-mud-20140515-zrd9w.html.

Commenter

Douglas

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 7:39AM

The money would have been squandered but just slower.

Commenter

Revolution disasters

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 8:30AM

Short memory, must have a short memory.

Commenter

Catherine

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 6:53AM

@ The Other Guy

Why drag up ancient history? Why dwell on the past? That's all forgotten; all water under the bridge. Hell, it's like holding today's Jews responsible for the crucifixion! A complete anachronism! It's time we all moved on and laid the blame for everything rotten in this country and the world generally at the right feet: Anthony John ABBOTT

It's time for truth and freedom and Fairfax is leading the way. Let Freedom Ring! I say!

I've been reading this august publication for a very long time and I now know that the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years were the best in Australia's history. There was no budget deficit and no debt (well, none worth worrying about); there was no chaos on the borders and all those boats full of "poor, vulnerable asylum seekers" arrived in a perfectly orderly fashion; the price on carbon was visionary and instantly brought about a reduction in global warming that was retrospective for twenty years; China and the mining industry had nothing to do with us escaping the worst ravages of the GFC - it was all due to Wayne Swan under the guidance and tutelage of the Great Father and Teacher of the Nation and world-recognised economic genius: Kevin Rudd. As you may recall, Kevin stood down for a few years and, crying with joy, handed the reins over to Australia's first female Prime Minister, so that he could mull over the great questions of the age before making a triumphant return after three years. And he'd found the answer: Move Garden Island to Queensland!

I guess you even believe Nicola Roxon questioned the marital status of Kevin's parents. She didn't say that at all. What she said was "Kevin was a bass tardist player" who built a "cyclo path".

Commenter

Jack Richards

Location

Snowy Mountains

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 7:05AM

TOG It's the lies, the LNP lies, that are a mess. They lied to get elected and now they continue to lie about their lies. Did you see the liar of a health minister on TV last night, claiming that he'd actually increased spending to health in the budget, just like Hockey lied on Monday night. It's pathological, and they have no morals as evidenced by their lying leader Abbott on radio giving a needy grandma a crude and sneaky wink.Abbott, and the LNP, have stepped Australia back fifty years. They need to be booted at the next election, in the States and Canberra, sooner if at all possible.

Commenter

Sam

Location

Sunnybank

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 7:06AM

Don't Panic anyone, the odds of Tony winning the next election are at $1.25, the lowest odds on for a PM, even last election it was NLP at $1.30. So all the polls in the world wont matter, bad budgets mean nothing to intelligent voted that know Labor overspent. It all comes down to Sportsbet, they even paid out on the NLP before the election results came through last year, so I have more faith in Sportsbet than ever as they are rarely wrong bwahahaa

Commenter

NLP Wins Again!!

Location

2016 Election

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 7:13AM

@TOG, Labor suffered a mining boom collapse and GFC in case you have forgotten. Howard got all the boom years, and still, once reaching a surplus, he took measures to put the government back into deficit by INCREASING WELFARE! It is actually better for a government to be in a managed deficit. Government bonds stabalise the money market and leave open the option for stabilising the economy by selling bonds to raise capital if needed. If you have a government in surplus the bond market does not exist, and hence the ability to protect the economy from shocks is reduced or even removed. The current and very temporary PM would like us all the to think that the government is like an individual in regard to finances, but the reality is very different, and Australia has one of the strongest and fittest economies in the world at present.

22 May
No wonder we're feeling squeezed. It's not that prices are climbing fast, the latest consumer price index has them advancing 2.9 per cent a year. It's that wages are growing at their slowest pace in the 18 years the Bureau of Statistics has been keeping records.

21 May
Tony Abbott was clearly deflecting this week when he declared his job “is not to win a popularity contest”. It’s the kind of thing no democratic politician really believes, but which you must say in the face of catastrophic polling of the order presently dogging his government. For now the popular focus is on whether or not Abbott can recover; whether this will be the fortnight that ultimately relegates him to a single term. But in truth there are bigger questions here, and the Coalition faces a conundrum far tougher than merely figuring out how to win the next election. And it’s a conundrum created well before last Tuesday.

21 May
Tony Abbott is feeling a little sick - and it's not just the after effects of what might generously be termed a difficult morning on the wireless with the Prime Minister bombarded in multiple radio interviews with the concerns and criticisms of furious talkback callers.

21 May
When Julia Gillard was Prime Minister and her embittered predecessor Kevin Rudd was hovering offstage, and intrigue abounded, and Labor was enduring a string of cost blow-ups, and shredded budget estimates, and was flat-lining in the polls, it cooked up one of the great political con jobs.